README.md (view raw)
1medusa
2======
3
4medusa is an emulator for running Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance and Game Boy games. It aims to be faster and more accurate than many existing Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance emulators, as well as adding features that other emulators lack. It also supports Game Boy and Game Boy Color games.
5
6Up-to-date news and downloads can be found at [mgba.io](https://mgba.io/).
7
8[](https://travis-ci.org/mgba-emu/mgba)
9
10Features
11--------
12
13- Highly accurate Game Boy Advance hardware support[<sup>[1]</sup>](#missing).
14- Partial DS hardware support[<sup>[1]</sup>](#missing).
15- Game Boy/Game Boy Color hardware support.
16- Fast emulation for Game Boy and Game Boy Advance. Known to run at full speed even on low end hardware, such as netbooks[<sup>[2]</sup>](#dscaveat).
17- Qt and SDL ports for a heavy-weight and a light-weight frontend.
18- Local (same computer) link cable support.
19- Save type detection, even for flash memory size[<sup>[3]</sup>](#flashdetect).
20- Support for cartridges with motion sensors and rumble (only usable with game controllers)[<sup>[2]</sup>](#dscaveat).
21- Real-time clock support, even without configuration.
22- Solar sensor support for Boktai games.
23- Game Boy Camera and Game Boy Printer support.
24- A built-in GBA BIOS implementation, and ability to load external BIOS files. DS currently requires BIOS and firmware dumps[<sup>[2]</sup>](#dscaveat).
25- Turbo/fast-forward support by holding Tab.
26- Rewind by holding Backquote.
27- Frameskip, configurable up to 10.
28- Screenshot support.
29- Cheat code support[<sup>[2]</sup>](#dscaveat).
30- 9 savestate slots. Savestates are also viewable as screenshots[<sup>[2]</sup>](#dscaveat).
31- Video and GIF recording.
32- Remappable controls for both keyboards and gamepads.
33- Loading from ZIP and 7z files.
34- IPS, UPS and BPS patch support.
35- Game debugging via a command-line interface and GDB remote support, compatible with IDA Pro.
36- Configurable emulation rewinding.
37- Support for loading and exporting GameShark and Action Replay snapshots.
38- Cores available for RetroArch/Libretro and OpenEmu.
39- Many, many smaller things.
40
41#### Game Boy mappers
42
43The following mappers are fully supported:
44
45- MBC1
46- MBC1M
47- MBC2
48- MBC3
49- MBC3+RTC
50- MBC5
51- MBC5+Rumble
52- MBC7
53- Wisdom Tree (unlicensed)
54
55The following mappers are partially supported:
56
57- MBC6
58- MMM01
59- Pocket Cam
60- TAMA5
61- HuC-1
62- HuC-3
63
64### Planned features
65
66- Networked multiplayer link cable support.
67- Dolphin/JOY bus link cable support.
68- M4A audio mixing, for higher quality sound than hardware.
69- Re-recording support for tool-assist runs.
70- Lua support for scripting.
71- A comprehensive debug suite.
72- e-Reader support.
73- Wireless adapter support.
74- OpenGL renderer.
75- HLE support for DS BIOS and DS ARM7 processor.
76- Synthesizing a customizable DS firmware to avoid needing a dump.
77
78Supported Platforms
79-------------------
80
81- Windows Vista or newer
82- OS X 10.7 (Lion)[<sup>[4]</sup>](#osxver) or newer
83- Linux
84- FreeBSD
85
86The following platforms are supported for everything except DS:
87
88- Nintendo 3DS
89- Wii
90- PlayStation Vita
91
92Other Unix-like platforms, such as OpenBSD, are known to work as well, but are untested and not fully supported.
93
94### System requirements
95
96Requirements are minimal[<sup>[2]</sup>](#dscaveat). Any computer that can run Windows Vista or newer should be able to handle emulation. Support for OpenGL 1.1 or newer is also required, with OpenGL 3.2 or newer for shaders and advanced features.
97
98Downloads
99---------
100
101Downloads can be found on the official website, in the [Downloads][downloads] section. The source code can be found on [GitHub][source].
102
103Controls
104--------
105
106Controls are configurable in the settings menu. Many game controllers should be automatically mapped by default. The default keyboard controls are as follows for GB and GBA:
107
108- **A**: X
109- **B**: Z
110- **L**: A
111- **R**: S
112- **Start**: Enter
113- **Select**: Backspace
114
115DS default controls are slightly different:
116
117- **A**: X
118- **B**: Z
119- **X**: S
120- **Y**: A
121- **L**: Q
122- **R**: W
123- **Start**: Enter
124- **Select**: Backspace
125
126Compiling
127---------
128
129Compiling requires using CMake 3.1 or newer. GCC and Clang are both known to work to compile medusa, but Visual Studio 2013 and older are known not to work. Support for Visual Studio 2015 and newer is coming soon.
130
131#### Docker building
132
133The recommended way to build for most platforms is to use Docker. Several Docker images are provided that contain the requisite toolchain and dependencies for building mGBA across several platforms.
134
135To use a Docker image to build mGBA, simply run the following command while in the root of an mGBA checkout:
136
137 docker run --rm -t -v $PWD:/home/mgba/src mgba/windows:w32
138
139This will produce a `build-win32` directory with the build products. Replace `mgba/windows:w32` with another Docker image for other platforms, which will produce a corresponding other directory. The following Docker images available on Docker Hub:
140
141- mgba/3ds
142- mgba/switch
143- mgba/ubuntu:xenial
144- mgba/ubuntu:bionic
145- mgba/ubuntu:cosmic
146- mgba/ubuntu:disco
147- mgba/vita
148- mgba/wii
149- mgba/windows:w32
150- mgba/windows:w64
151
152#### *nix building
153
154To use CMake to build on a Unix-based system, the recommended commands are as follows:
155
156 mkdir build
157 cd build
158 cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=/usr ..
159 make
160 sudo make install
161
162This will build and install medusa into `/usr/bin` and `/usr/lib`. Dependencies that are installed will be automatically detected, and features that are disabled if the dependencies are not found will be shown after running the `cmake` command after warnings about being unable to find them.
163
164If you are on macOS, the steps are a little different. Assuming you are using the homebrew package manager, the recommended commands to obtain the dependencies and build are:
165
166 brew install cmake ffmpeg libzip qt5 sdl2 libedit pkg-config
167 mkdir build
168 cd build
169 cmake -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=`brew --prefix qt5` ..
170 make
171
172Note that you should not do a `make install` on macOS, as it will not work properly.
173
174#### Windows developer building
175
176To build on Windows for development, using MSYS2 is recommended. Follow the installation steps found on their [website](https://msys2.github.io). Make sure you're running the 32-bit version ("MSYS2 MinGW 32-bit") (or the 64-bit version "MSYS2 MinGW 64-bit" if you want to build for x86_64) and run this additional command (including the braces) to install the needed dependencies (please note that this involves downloading over 1100MiB of packages, so it will take a long time):
177
178For x86 (32 bit) builds:
179
180 pacman -Sy --needed base-devel git mingw-w64-i686-{cmake,ffmpeg,gcc,gdb,libelf,libepoxy,libzip,pkg-config,qt5,SDL2,ntldd-git}
181
182For x86_64 (64 bit) builds:
183
184 pacman -Sy --needed base-devel git mingw-w64-x86_64-{cmake,ffmpeg,gcc,gdb,libelf,libepoxy,libzip,pkg-config,qt5,SDL2,ntldd-git}
185
186Check out the source code by running this command:
187
188 git clone https://github.com/mgba-emu/mgba.git -b medusa medusa
189
190Then finally build it by running these commands:
191
192 cd medusa
193 mkdir build
194 cd build
195 cmake .. -G "MSYS Makefiles"
196 make
197
198Please note that this build of medusa for Windows is not suitable for distribution, due to the scattering of DLLs it needs to run, but is perfect for development. However, if distributing such a build is desired (e.g. for testing on machines that don't have the MSYS2 environment installed), running `cpack -G ZIP` will prepare a zip file with all of the necessary DLLs.
199
200#### Toolchain building
201
202If you have devkitARM (for 3DS), devkitPPC (for Wii), devkitA64 (for Switch), or vitasdk (for PS Vita), you can use the following commands for building:
203
204 mkdir build
205 cd build
206 cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../src/platform/3ds/CMakeToolchain.txt ..
207 make
208
209Replace the `-DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE` parameter for the following platforms:
210
211- 3DS: `../src/platform/3ds/CMakeToolchain.txt`
212- Switch: `../src/platform/switch/CMakeToolchain.txt`
213- Vita: `../src/platform/psp2/CMakeToolchain.vitasdk`
214- Wii: `../src/platform/wii/CMakeToolchain.txt`
215
216### Dependencies
217
218medusa has no hard dependencies, however, the following optional dependencies are required for specific features. The features will be disabled if the dependencies can't be found.
219
220- Qt 5: for the GUI frontend. Qt Multimedia or SDL are required for audio.
221- SDL: for a more basic frontend and gamepad support in the Qt frontend. SDL 2 is recommended, but 1.2 is supported.
222- zlib and libpng: for screenshot support and savestate-in-PNG support.
223- libedit: for command-line debugger support.
224- ffmpeg or libav: for video recording.
225- libzip or zlib: for loading ROMs stored in zip files.
226- ImageMagick: for GIF recording.
227- SQLite3: for game databases.
228- libelf: for ELF loading.
229
230SQLite3, libpng, and zlib are included with the emulator, so they do not need to be externally compiled first.
231
232Footnotes
233---------
234
235<a name="missing">[1]</a> Currently missing features on GBA are
236
237- OBJ window for modes 3, 4 and 5 ([Bug #5](http://mgba.io/b/5))
238
239Missing features on DS are
240
241- Audio:
242 - Master audio settings
243 - Sound output capture
244 - Microphone
245- Graphics:
246 - Edge marking/wireframe
247 - Highlight shading
248 - Fog
249 - Anti-aliasing
250 - Alpha test
251 - Position test
252 - Vector test
253 - Bitmap rear plane
254 - Large bitmap mode 6
255 - 1-dot depth clipping
256 - Vector matrix memory mapping
257 - Polygon/vertex RAM entry count memory mapping
258 - Rendered line count memory mapping
259 - Horizontal scrolling on 3D background
260 - Some bitmap OBJ mappings
261 - DMA FIFO backgrounds
262- Other:
263 - Cache emulation/estimation
264 - Slot-2 access/RAM/rumble
265 - BIOS protection
266 - Display start DMAs
267 - Most of Wi-Fi
268 - RTC interrupts
269 - Manual IPC sync IRQs
270 - Lid switch
271 - Power management
272 - Touchscreen temperature/pressure support
273 - Various MMIO registers
274 - DSi cart protections
275
276<a name="dscaveat">[2]</a> Many feature are still missing on the DS, including savestates, cheats, rumble, HLE BIOS, and more.
277
278<a name="flashdetect">[3]</a> Flash memory size detection does not work in some cases. These can be configured at runtime, but filing a bug is recommended if such a case is encountered.
279
280<a name="osxver">[3]</a> 10.7 is only needed for the Qt port. The SDL port is known to work on 10.5, and may work on older.
281
282[downloads]: http://mgba.io/downloads.html
283[source]: https://github.com/mgba-emu/mgba/
284
285Copyright
286---------
287
288medusa is Copyright © 2013 – 2020 Jeffrey Pfau. It is distributed under the [Mozilla Public License version 2.0](https://www.mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/). A copy of the license is available in the distributed LICENSE file.
289
290medusa contains the following third-party libraries:
291
292- [inih](https://github.com/benhoyt/inih), which is copyright © 2009 Ben Hoyt and used under a BSD 3-clause license.
293- [blip-buf](https://code.google.com/archive/p/blip-buf), which is copyright © 2003 – 2009 Shay Green and used under a Lesser GNU Public License.
294- [LZMA SDK](http://www.7-zip.org/sdk.html), which is public domain.
295- [MurmurHash3](https://github.com/aappleby/smhasher) implementation by Austin Appleby, which is public domain.
296- [getopt for MSVC](https://github.com/skandhurkat/Getopt-for-Visual-Studio/), which is public domain.
297- [SQLite3](https://www.sqlite.org), which is public domain.
298
299If you are a game publisher and wish to license medusa for commercial usage, please email [licensing@mgba.io](mailto:licensing@mgba.io) for more information.